The Rise and Fall of Jim Morrison

The Rise and Fall of Jim Morrison

Some would say it all started in July 1965. America was in a fragile state, in the midst of the Vietnam War. It was a time of confusion, yet also a time of revolutionary change. It was a time when people were yearning to find their purpose on this big, beautiful planet.

Jim glided across the golden sand that paints the beaches of Venice, California. With the crashing ocean waves serving as the background music to that warm summer day, he sat down next to a UCLA classmate he recognized on the beach. Without much introduction, Jim told his classmate, Ray, he wanted to start a band.

Ray replied laughing, “Do you even sing?”

Confidently, still with the natural background music of the Earth there to compliment Jim’s voice, he spoke the following words: “Let’s swim to the moon, let's climb to the tide, penetrate the evening that the city sleeps to hide.”

Ray sat there awestruck. “Did you really write that?”

“Yes.”

And thus, the beginning of one of the most iconic rock bands to this day was set in motion. Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek sat there on Venice Beach looking out at the horizon, completely unknowledgeable of what their lives would soon become. The places they would travel, the people they would meet. Not knowing the fortune and success that they would stumble upon, but the inevitable depression and darkness that they would endure as well. Jim and Ray sat there on Venice Beach with the warm sand cushioning their toes, the hot sun radiating off their bronze faces, and the cool ocean breeze blowing strands of their hair so gracefully in the wind, clueless that they would soon become known in every country around the world as the new rebellious and destructive rock band: The Doors.

But as I said before, only some would say this all began on that warm summer day in July 1965. Jim’s journey began much earlier than that.

December 8th, 1943, Melbourne Florida– a legend was born.

Growing Up

Jim was born James Douglas Morrison, son to Clara Virginia and Rear Admiral George Stephen Morrison, who commanded US Naval Forces during the Vietnam War. Being in a military family was tough for Jim. Moving from state to state and never having very many lasting friendships, Jim was forced into forming some underdeveloped and unusual social skills.

In 1947, at only four years old, a tragic accident had reshaped Jim’s life forever. The Morrison’s were driving on a highway in the desert and witnessed a horrific vehicle crash where Jim feasted his innocent, youthful eyes upon several Native Americans lying bloody and lifeless. Unable to stop looking, despite his parents’ efforts, Jim swears that on that day the soul of one of the lifeless Native Americans’ elevated from ground where the motionless body rested and entered into his own. Morrison believed this incident to be the most formative event of his life and would use that as an excuse to justify any of his unorthodox and inappropriate behaviors to come. References to this event have been repeatedly made by Jim through various songs and poems.

In the years to come, Jim’s family moved from state to state to satisfy his father’s occupation. Knowing that no home or friendship would last too long, Jim buried himself in books. His favorite authors were his only friendships that lasted, for they would always be there no matter where he traveled. Jim found a particular liking in poetry and the workings of several philosophers. The band’s name, The Doors, originated from a quote by one of Jim’s favorite authors:

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite.”

–William Blake

It was around the time Jim discovered his passionate interest in reading, that he subsequently began getting himself into trouble. Jim had become so interested in the philosophy of humans, that he often pushed peoples’ limits and boundaries in an attempt to illicit certain reactions. He not only wanted to see the extent of what he could get away with, but it was also a way in which he could provoke others to stand up for themselves and speak their truths.

By this nature of behavior, Jim was ejected from many living situations throughout his time spent in college. He did not want people to hold back from expressing their true emotions, so he did everything he could to piss them off. Morrison thought he was doing them a favor by teaching them to be true to themselves, but it was hard for the targets he preyed on to see it that way. Jim never did learn his lesson, and his vexatious behavior followed him into stardom.

While studying at Florida State University, Jim grew a passion for film. This is when his professors urged him to transfer to UCLA to further his prosperity. So he moved to Los Angeles. And thank God he did. Jim made two films at UCLA before graduating in 1965. The films were bizarre and harshly criticized, driving him into a state of dark sadness. His brain was complex. He was shy and misunderstood. The meaning behind his actions and words were buried so beneath the surface that it was hard for anyone to relate. Jim did not take criticism lightly. He gave up on film.

Filled with contempt, Jim did not attend his UCLA graduation. His diploma was mailed to his family in Florida; a family in which he had left in the past, never to look back upon. Then he moved to Venice Beach, California.

And so we return to that warm day in July 1965, where Jim and Ray sat in the soft golden grains, looking out into the endless horizon of the Pacific Ocean dreaming of their futures, not knowing that their dreams would soon come true.

Not much time had passed until the sun and the stars aligned perfectly on the Earth’s rotation to form a fate that would go down in history forever. The gravitational pull of the moon not only guided the salty waves of Venice Beach, but it guided John Densmore and Robby Krieger into the company of Jim and Ray. The Doors of Perception were finally open.

C’mon baby light my fire.

Stardom

Once they began making the music, The Doors started playing regularly in a popular local LA venue, Whisky a Go-Go, on the Sunset Strip. Jim’s shy and reserved persona increased substantially when performing in front of crowds. He rarely faced the audience while performing and was almost always seen with his back to the crowd. And in order to cope with the newfound limelight, the pressure of upcoming fame and stardom drew him to the bottle. Alcohol was Jim’s vice of choice. The alcohol would soon take Jim on a dangerous and self-destructive path.

Less than two years after Jim and Ray’s encounter on the beach, The Doors were signed to Elektra record label. In the 60’s, a new age was rising where the norms of society were being loosened from its noose. The people finally started to have a voice and ability to express their own opinions. Freedom. The Doors were labeled an antiestablishment band, often singing of dark and powerful subjects such as death, murder and madness. The darkness was also accompanied by more traditional themes such as sex, drugs and rock and roll. A few months after being signed, their hit single Light My Fire landed them the number one spot on Billboard’s Top 100 in June ‘67 and remained there for three weeks straight. The Doors were finally on the map.

While listening to the radio in his room, Morrison’s younger brother Andrew was interrupted by a friend barging through his door.

As Light My Fire played in the background the boy screamed excitedly, “Andrew, do you know who that is?”

“The Doors, so?”

“Andrew, that’s your fucking brother singing.”

Jim’s family, who he hadn’t given a thought about since he left Florida, had no idea what Jim had been up to this whole time.

It was only a matter of time before the whole world would know of Jim and his rebellion, coexisting with Manzarek, Densmore and Krieger.

Their aesthetic was different from most upcoming bands at that time. The Beatles were young and innocent. The Grateful Dead were peaceful and happy. The Doors were dark and reckless. Jim was a bad boy. A menace. A rebel dressed in leather. He took the world by surprise and made it his kingdom.

Once risen to stardom, The Doors were requested to perform on the Ed Sullivan Show. The band was to play the hit songs Light My Fire and People Are Strange. They were asked by Sullivan’s censors to not reference drug use on air while performing their top hit.

“Can you please change the line ‘girl we couldn’t get much higher’ to ‘girl we couldn’t get much better?’”

Jim complied.

So the band got on stage. Manzarek on the organ. Krieger on the electric guitar. Densmore on the drums. And Jim, standing at the front of the stage with his brown curly hair sitting long enough to brush the top of his shoulders, took his microphone off the stand and started singing.

“You know that it would be untrue,

You know that I would be a liar,

If I was to say to you,

Girl, we couldn’t get much higher.” They four shared glances amongst each other and smirked mockingly.

The band finished the song without changing a single word. Once they walked off stage, Sullivan angrily refused to shake any of their hands. The show producer told the band they would never be invited to perform on the Ed Sullivan Show again.

Jim shrugged. “Well hey man, we already did.”

This would not be the last time The Doors would expose their insurrection and dereliction to the world.

Downfall

Jim was spiraling faster down his self-destructive path. His excessive drinking was becoming a nightmare to his bandmates and his fans. He would miss practices, and most of the time when he actually did show up, he was too drunk and pugnacious to even rehearse. On one occasion Jim arrived to the studio to find that his band mates had already left and then proceeded to trash the whole place. He never paid for the damages.

The law finally caught up with Jim’s destruction on a cold December night in 1967. He was arrested for the first time in his musical career– although not the first time in his life. The Doors were to perform a show in New Haven, Connecticut. Before the show, Jim met a woman and took her backstage to the shower area where the two began kissing. Not recognizing Jim as the band’s front man that he was supposed to be protecting, a security guard at the venue told Morrison and the woman to vacate the area.

“Eat it,” Jim told the guard.

The guard pulled out a can of mace, “Last chance.”

“Last chance to eat it!”

Jim was sprayed in the face with pepper spray right before he was about to perform.

The officer apologized for the incident after The Doors’ manager told him he had just maced the lead singer of the very band he had been hired to guard, admitting he hadn’t recognized the singer.

When Jim was finally able to perform, his fury caught up to him mid-song. He stopped singing.

“The whole world fucking hates me,” he yelled into the microphone.

Jim proceeded to tell the audience of his encounter with the officer backstage. He went on to call him a little blue pig in a little blue hat.

“I’m just like you guys man, he did it to me, they’ll do it to you.”

The crowd went wild.

The police came on stage and dragged Jim out. Morrison was arrested and charged with inciting a riot, indecency and public obscenity. Thirteen other arrests were made following Jim’s, as the angry and disappointed crowds took to the streets.

This was the first of two arrests that made an extremely harsh impact on The Doors. The second happened on March 1st 1969, Miami Florida.

He said, she said.

Rumor has it, while on stage at a venue in Miami, Morrison exposed his penis in front of an audience composed of nearly twelve thousand people. Jim appeared to masturbate in full view of the crowd while screaming different obscenities. He was sentenced to jail and given a fine to pay after being found guilty of indecent exposure and open profanity. But did it really happen? Five hundred photos were entered into evidence and not a single one depicted Morrison doing anything of the sort. In addition to that, he and his bandmates swore that he never actually pulled it out, he was only joking about doing it.

Whether it happened or not, after this fiasco, the touring days for The Doors were pretty much over. No venue wanted to gamble with the consequences that normally followed their performances. Many cities in many states banned The Doors from performing there.

Jim felt like a laughingstock. His alcoholism, meant to cope with his anxieties, only made them worse. It ruined him. He was heart broken. He wanted to start over and write poetry but no one took him seriously. He started this journey wanting to be the change the world needed. He wanted to open up the minds of his fans and allow them to explore every crevice of their brains that had been smocked with spider webs. He wanted to be looked up to. Yearned to be understood. And to him, all he ended up as was the dirty rock star who wasn’t welcomed anywhere to perform anymore. Jim’s ego had taken a huge hit. He let himself down. The pain crawled so deeply inside him that the only way he knew how to cope was to escape his reality. He got routinely drunk enough to forget his rise and fall, and when he woke and the pain was numbingly present, he did it all over again. Jim’s once slender figure and child-like face was now fattened and bearded. The alcohol took a toll on his mind, body and soul.

New Beginnings

It wasn’t long after that, that Jim moved to Paris, France with his longtime lover Pamela Courson. He wanted to focus on himself and his poetry. He wanted to forget about the dreadful life he left behind. The embarrassment and humiliation he caused not only himself, but his band as well. Jim wanted to achieve happiness. Peace. He wanted to rebuild his name, reconnect his muse. He crawled out of the dark abyss that he had been living in internally for so long. He brushed the dust off his leather jacket and packed his things.

March 11th, 1971.

Jim sat on an airplane headed for Paris, looked out of his window and smiled. He turned his head to the left to see his eternally beautiful inamorata sitting beside him. Her silky red hair draped down past her shoulders and stopped just below her breasts. She looked back at him. He saw blue eyes filled with hope. She looked back and saw the same. He grabbed her soft porcelain-like hand, closed his eyes and dreamt of the future. A new beginning awaits.

The couple arrived at their new flat in Paris. Things started off calm. Jim enjoyed the tranquility of Paris. He found coffee shops he enjoyed reading and writing in. Things were feeling normal, relaxing. But ultimately Jim could not escape his fate. After some time, he eventually gave into the plague that had been slowly killing him already.

In the early morning of July 3rd, 1971, Pamela found Jim’s body lying lifeless in the bathtub at their apartment on the rue Beautreillis in Paris. Although a prisoner to his specific vices, heroin had never been touched by the hands of Jim Morrison until that night.

This Is The End, Beautiful Friend

Jim drew himself a warm bath after a night out with Pam. He walked over to the mirror hanging above the sink and saw an unfamiliar man staring back at him.

“Who have I become?” He thought.

As Jim was staring back at the man he could not recognize anymore, he looked down and saw a bag of powder on the sink that had been left there by Pamela. Jim set up a line for himself of what he believed to be cocaine and grabbed a dollar from his pocket. He knelt down; his tired, bearded face leveled with the sink, and breathed the substance up deeply through his nose.

The euphoria. This was not cocaine.

Jim was still alive but felt like he was already in heaven. He turned the faucet on the bathtub off. He undressed and stepped in slowly. He felt every inch of his body entering the warm tub until he was fully submerged in the sparkling water from his neck down. He closed his eyes peacefully and took a deep breath. He thought of the Native Americans in the crash. He thought about each home he lived in as a child. He thought about meeting Ray on the beach. He thought about his first show at the Whisky. He thought about his song holding the number one spot on the Billboard’s Top 100 for three weeks straight. He thought about his band, his friends. He thought about seeing Pamela’s face for the first time and falling in love. He thought until his breath ran out. And that would be the last breath Jim Morrison would ever take.

“People fear death even more than pain. It’s strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over. Yeah, I guess it is a friend.”

–Jim Morrison

Jim Morrison was twenty-seven years old when Pamela Courson found his lifeless body lying in the tub. Only twenty-seven, but what a life he lived. Speculation, as expected, followed the circumstances of his death but I’d like to believe Jim went out without fear, without pain.

Despite his faults, Jim Morrison will remain in history as one of the most extraordinary and talented artists to grace this planet. Thank you for your life Jim, may you Rock in Eternal Peace.